


Worth Saving

by agentx13



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV)
Genre: F/M, hints of past sexual assault, sharon carter week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 03:08:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30133086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentx13/pseuds/agentx13
Summary: “Make you a deal,” he says instead.She doesn’t look like she trusts him, but she isn’t leaving or shooting him, either. Yet.“Next time everyone thinks you’re dead, I’ll double check. And you do the same for me. Deal?”She doesn’t answer right away. And then, hesitantly, “Deal.”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sharon Carter
Comments: 10
Kudos: 95





	Worth Saving

When she closes her eyes, she’s back in that damned prison cell. She smells the human waste, feels the sweat cloying to her skin, hears the muffled cries from other cells creeping down the hall.

She can handle it. She’s been trained to handle it. She’s woken from this nightmare time and time again, and every time she’s handled it. It’s about focusing. Focus on the mission, focus on the goal.

But she can’t focus this time. The hotel room is spacious – more spacious than the cell, at least – but she can hear noises outside the door, faint echoes creeping down the hallway. Each one is a distraction. Each one makes her think the air is rancid and that the guards will be by in a moment to do what she can’t stop them from doing.

Without turning on the light, she flees.

The air outside is only cool on her skin. She hadn’t realized how much she’d started to sweat. She takes deep, steadying breaths. She’d trained to survive such scenarios. She hadn’t trained to survive the aftermath. But she’ll survive. She’ll handle it. Giving up would let them win. Giving up would admit defeat. She has to handle it. She doesn’t know what else to do.

The hotel is tucked back from a highway, with bright white streetlights lining the road and dotting the parking lot. The light is too bright and hurts her eyes. She looks away and works her way around the side of the building, then farther and farther away. This area hasn’t been developed yet, though she doubts this patch of land, with scrub brush farther away from the hotel and then woods she can’t see beyond will last more than a couple months, judging by how fast the city is growing. She makes sure the hotel is still within sight if something should happen – no telling if Sam or Bucky will demand she tell the other he’s not talking to him – and sits on a patch of grass. She looks up the sky, at the stars that stretch into endless nothingness, and she breathes, and she breathes, and she breathes. Here, the air is just as free as she is. Here, the air smells clean. Here, there are no muffled cries from people losing hope and the will to live.

She doesn’t know how long she’s there before she’s aware of him. She’s almost hyperaware now, and her fingers move instinctively to her knife before she realizes he’s not a threat. “You shouldn’t skulk,” she calls softly, not turning her head.

Several seconds pass before he quietly sits nearby. He’s cut his hair, maybe overcompensating after it had been so long for- well. So long. But he looks good. His color is better. He’s healthier. He doesn’t seem so sad and miserable all the time. He no longer looks like she feels.

They sit in silence, and she’s losing herself to her thoughts when an errant thought occurs to her: She isn’t the only one here who hadn’t been rescued.

“What was it like?” she asks without moving. Her voice, quiet as it is, seems as loud as a scream in the stillness. “When you got captured. Did you think he’d come for you? Save you?”

“Back in the War?” There have been so many wars in their lifetimes, but that one, the one that matters most to him, the one that had changed him and defined him in so many ways, is always capitalized, even in his speech. Especially in his speech.

“Yeah.”

“I never dreamed he’d save me. I thought the little rat was safe at home where I left him.”

They fall into silence again as she tries to pick out what she wants to ask. How she wants to ask it. “What about the time after? When he could have done something? When you _knew_ he could have done something?”

She doesn’t move, but she can feel him watching her in the darkness. “At first,” he admits, and it sounds like the memory pains him. “But then I didn’t want him anywhere near those people.” He’s quiet. “And then I couldn’t remember him at all.”

She wonders what that would be like, to forget him. If she would be better for it. “I’m sorry you went through that,” she says, and she’s sincere. She is. People forget – even she sometimes forgets – that he isn’t just a character in a history book. He’s a flesh and blood man who went through hell. A hell she thinks she understands better now. A hell she wishes neither of them knew so well.

He looks up at the stars. This time, he’s the one who has difficulty choosing his words. “I’m an expert in trauma. If you want to talk.”

For the first time since coming outside, she turns to look at him. “I’d rather shoot you,” she says firmly.

He’s taken aback, and she walks away. That’s the problem with being in the dark. Secrets think it’s safe to come out there.

* * *

Bucky has always been good at keeping still. For sniping, it’s essential. For recovery, stillness of body helps him still his mind. Right now, at the breakfast table, he leans back in his seat and sits still while he watches Sharon pacing back and forth, checking her burner phone. For now, the hotel dining area is just the three of them.

Sam steals some of his pancakes. Bucky can think of eight ways to stop him that don’t involve severing body parts, but for now, he’ll let Sam have the damn pancakes. “Take a break,” Sam calls to Sharon. “It’s breakfast.” He waves his fork at the table.

“Not hungry,” she says.

“But you’re trained to know better,” Bucky points out, and that makes her pause. She drops into a chair. He pushes his pancakes toward her. “Who’d point that out if you’d shot me?” he asks with a grin.

She glares at him, and his grin widens. Not many people threaten him these days. Not many who could pull it off. But he doesn’t think she’d appreciate knowing how much he’d laughed about her words the night before. Not that he didn’t think she could do it – he believed she could. But to go from the haunting remembrances of Steve to that… He’d thought it was funny. He should probably mention it in his next therapy session.

“What now?” Sam asks.

Instead of answering, Bucky gets up for another helping of pancakes. After getting their share – and probably more than their share, if he’s being honest – of coffee, they’re off.

He pays more attention to her now. He thinks he knows what to watch for. He’s gone through some of it himself. He’s gotten help for it. He still has a lot more work to do, but he’s more aware of trauma and its impact now.

He’d noticed her leaving the hotel that first night because he’d been having trouble getting to sleep himself and had wanted to do a perimeter check. Now he notices her leaving whatever hotel they’re in because he can hear her door open and shut late into the night.

He notices when she’s quiet. When she’s jumpy. He starts working out what seems to set her off. He does more research. Asks some friends in Wakanda for advice.

One night, when she’s crept outside and found a patch of shadow at a picnic table, he follows.

“You didn’t get snapped.” He tries to sound gentle, but the statement also gives her little room to argue.

She looks up at him, her expression slack in its surprise, and then her lips form a tight line.

He sits beside her, and he waits. The silence stretches, and he continues to wait. Maybe she’s waiting for him to give up. To leave. But he outwaits her.

“I was on a mission,” she says slowly. “It went sideways. There was a fight. I was going in to hit somebody, and they just… disappeared. It looked like everyone was disappearing. Turning to dust. Someone hit me from behind. I woke up in a cell. No clue what happened.” She lapses into silence again, seeing something he’ll never be able to see. “We’d broken up. Me and Steve. I didn’t think- Even broken up, I could count on him. We’d broken up before, and he would always-” Her eyes fall. “I counted the days. But it still wasn’t until it snowed that I realized how much time had passed. And I realized he wasn’t coming.”

Bucky suddenly realizes that, despite having done research, despite having asked for advice, he really has no idea how to handle this. “I’m sure he would have if he’d known.”

She turns her head but not enough to look at him. “He never even said goodbye. He never tried to find me when everyone came back.” And now she looks at him, and her eyes are pained and angry. “Does that sound like someone who would have come for me?”

Ah, yes. The direct question trick. The same one he’d played on her. Turnabout is fair play.

She’s still staring at him, waiting for him to answer, but they both know what the answer is.

“Make you a deal,” he says instead.

She doesn’t look like she trusts him, but she isn’t leaving or shooting him, either. Yet.

“Next time everyone thinks you’re dead, I’ll double check. And you do the same for me. Deal?”

She doesn’t answer right away. And then, hesitantly, “Deal.”

* * *

One night things are too hot for them to risk being identified at a hotel. They camp in a state park. Normally, Sam would be complaining, good-naturedly, but tonight he’s as quiet as Bucky and Sharon.

“Admit it,” Sharon says over the dinner she’d bought them at a gas station. She’s the least recognizable of the three of them, so she’s the one who does most of the errands. “You kind of hate Steve right now.”

“I don’t hate him,” Sam said, in a tight way that suggested he was trying not to hate Steve more than he was succeeding.

“But he left when you needed him,” Sharon continued knowingly.

Sam turned his face to look at her. “I don’t like that he left me with this weight and no guidance, no. And I don’t like that he’s not exactly being supportive now. But I also know what it’ll mean when little Black kids see me with the shield. I’ll carry the weight, and I won’t blame him for it being hard. I knew it was going to be hard. From what I can tell, _you’re_ the one here who hates him. Want to talk about that?”

“I didn’t sign up to be in your support group, Wilson.”

“I’m not asking because I want you in my support group, Carter.”

Bucky shifts enough to draw their attention. “The fact is, Steve _isn’t_ here. So whatever we do next, we’ve got to figure out on our own.”

Sam turns away from her and focuses on his food. Bucky isn’t looking at her. She watches them both. She should eat, she knows that. She should make herself eat. Maybe she won’t throw up like she thinks she would.

“Out with it,” Sam says impatiently. He still isn’t looking at her, and she hates that _she’s_ she one they’re upset with because of what Steve did to all of them. “I can tell you want to say something. Out with it.”

“He left us.” She tries not to yell, and it comes out as a whisper. “He didn’t think any of us were worth sticking around for.” She pulls out a rotten piece of lettuce and throws it into the woods.

“You two were broken up again,” he says, not unkindly.

It’s the tone that’s the worst part, like he thinks he understands. “You don’t get it.” She stares at her sandwich, as if it should answer for Steve’s crimes.

“Tell me.”

She looks at Bucky. He nods, still not looking at her. She takes a breath. “We kept getting together.” It sounds like a weak argument now. “Every time we broke up, we would separate and then work things out and get back together, and I thought that would happen again.”

“But then he got married to somebody else.” Again, that knowing tone.

She shakes her head, a tight gesture, as if she’ll lose control if she moves more than that. “Then I didn’t get dusted.”

Sam stares at her.

Bucky doesn’t look at her.

She looks down at her sandwich. After a couple seconds, she impatiently shoves it back in its plastic container. “I do hate him,” she says at last. “No one deserves to be left behind. No one deserves to think-” She freezes as the thought slaps her. But now that it’s there, she can’t think of anything else, and she sounds out each word carefully. “To think they’re not worth saving.”

She gets to her feet. She doesn’t know if she’s going to cry or be sick or both. She’d wondered, time and time again, why he hadn’t looked for her, why he hadn’t found her. When he’d thought her dead without proof, when he’d known she was alive. He’d never looked for her. She’d wondered why, and now she knows.

“You have people to use as resources who aren’t Steve.” She can’t look at them. If she does, she can’t guarantee the tears won’t spill over. “Use them. He’s the one who isn’t worthy of you, not the other way around.” Without waiting for them to say anything that might stop her, she goes to her sleeping bag and tucks herself inside. The only way to not cry loud enough for half the park to hear is to shut down, and she wills herself to shut down.

* * *

The next morning, Sam tells them he’s going to talk to someone. Not Steve. He makes a point of Sharon knowing that, and Bucky watches as Sharon pretends the words mean nothing to her. They make plans to meet at another location, and Sam leaves while Bucky and Sharon clean up the camp.

“I think he left so he wouldn’t have to do this,” she gripes as she tosses Sam’s bag in her trunk. With his bike unable to carry much, she has a lot of Bucky’s stuff in there, too.

“Probably,” Bucky agrees. He waits until they’re about to drive to the meeting point to say, “For what it’s worth, I think you’re worth saving.” And he drives off on his motorcycle. It takes longer than usual for her to follow.

* * *

She hates the word “healing.” The word implies a linear progress, a steady upward climb, and the reality is nothing like that. The reality is reminding herself of all the reasons Sam and Bucky wouldn’t leave her in the lurch and yet still not really believing they’d be there. The reality is falling asleep in the car because she feels safe enough to fall asleep around them and waking up to find she’s had a nightmare and punched Bucky in the eye. Which Sam thinks is hilarious.

And she kind of agrees.

Bucky certainly never holds it against her that she’s hit him. Of course, she’s never held it against him that he tried to kill her. Not really.

The mission is a success, and she’s almost surprised afterward that they keep in touch.

“You can’t leave this behind,” Sam tells her, waving a hand at his abs. Or maybe he’s indicating the shield.

“If you need me, call me,” she tells him. “And we’ll find out.”

He does end up calling her. He calls about catching up. He calls about meeting up. Getting together. Meeting other people. He’s the main reason she has what some therapists would borderline consider a social life.

And then one day he calls and tells her Bucky is missing.

* * *

He knows better than to get captured. He does. He has reasons not to. He has training not to.

And yet, things can always go wrong. The enemy can move unexpectedly. They can have more traps. They can get lucky.

He wants to think that it’s their good luck – and his bad – that has him chained inside a sensory deprivation chamber as they decide what to do with him. He knows what they’ll do. They’ll think about using him as the Winter Soldier for a couple days and then sell him to some Hydra remnant like the ones he’s been hunting down.

He has to find a way out of this chamber. Being alone with his thoughts is going to drive him insane. He’s been struggling against the chains for a while, straining against them and knowing the bruises he’s inflicting on himself will heal soon enough.

He can’t be taken again.

He _hates_ sensory deprivation chambers. There’s no way to stop his fear from overtaking him. Except for him. And he isn’t enough to stop his nightmares from coming true. He knows that. He knows all too well.

It almost makes him want to cry, but he doesn’t dare waste time breaking down. If he’s going to have his freedom taken away, he’s going to lose it knowing that he spent every moment he had fighting for it.

He has to get out of here. Sam is too much of a goddamn idiot to get himself out of trouble on his own. The wing guy needs a wing man, damn it. And Sharon… who’s going to save her when she gets in trouble? Sam?

If Sam is still around to save her and Bucky isn’t, Bucky is going to be _so_ embarrassed.

He shoves the thought to the side and concentrates again on getting the hell out of here. But with no success, he’s on the verge of losing his damn mind when the door opens. He launches himself out, meaning to attack whoever is there, and Sharon moves to the side, letting him fall to the ground.

“You okay?” she asks, still holding the door open.

He rolls over and looks at her, and she holds up the keys to his chains. There’s blood on her cheek and in her hair, but it looks like it’s someone else’s. He can hear more than his labored breathing. The air is cold on his sweat. He feels like he might throw up, but otherwise he feels fine. He takes another deep breath and drops his head on the floor.

“We had a deal,” she reminds him. She motions for him to roll over, and he does, letting her unlock the locks one by one.

“Where’s Sam?”

“Sam doesn’t know enough underworld contacts yet, poor guy. I called him for backup. He might be here in time to help clean up the Hydra goons these guys were going to try and sell you to.”

“I thought it would take them longer to decide to do that,” he admits, sitting up as the chains fall off.

She hands him a gun. “You up to taking down some Hydra agents on our way out?”

“Very.” He’s still shaky, still sweaty, but his hands still when she puts the gun in them, and he’d rather leave here with cleaning up Hydra agents than leaving them to strengthen Hydra again.

She takes him out to eat afterward. Waffles. It’s surreal and he eats more than enough to surprise her. Sam comes in as he’s eating a plate of hash browns, and when he finds out Sharon is paying, orders what Bucky’s had.

“Took out a whole base without me,” Sam says, staring Sharon in the eye as the waitress brings over plate after plate. “I’m not even gonna eat all of this.”

“I will,” Bucky says, grabbing the plate.

After, Sharon drives Bucky back to his motorcycle, which has been completely trashed. He grumbles as they try to stuff it in her trunk.

Later, in town, she hangs around as he orders parts for the bike and finds a hotel room. She isn’t hovering, exactly. But she’s clearly _there._

“I owe you,” he tells her.

“You’re the one who came up with that deal.”

“I meant for the waffles.”

She relents. The waffles _had_ cost a lot, in the end. “So. Are you okay? Good okay?”

“I’ll be fine.” She stares at him, eyes challenging him, and he grins. “I will.” He pauses. “Hey. We should try and do that regularly.”

“Take down people trying to rebuild Hydra?”

He shakes his head. “I mean, yes. That, too. But breakfast.”

She gives him a funny look. “Okay. Maybe separate tabs.”

He smiles. “Yeah, I think that would be best.”

It becomes a weekly thing. Thursdays, usually. Sam sometimes joins them. Always nine o’clock because neither Bucky nor Sharon are morning people and most places stop serving breakfast at ten.

And then one week she doesn’t show.

* * *

She has to force herself to breathe. Her hands are bound behind her back. Her ankles tied to the chair. She’s blindfolded. They’ve already interrogated her three times, wanting to know if she’s told anyone anything, left information anywhere.

Soon they’ll realize that no one knows anything about her, that no one is going to come for her. It’s already been days. Days of bleeding and beating and being dragged. Days of hunger and thirst and yelling and nightmares she can’t escape.

She strains against the ropes, as if that will do any good. They’ve taken her tools. She can’t reach the ones they haven’t found. She’s been trying since they caught her. So far they’ve only beaten her, but she knows what comes next. They’ve already talked about how little female companionship they get around here. And there’s an edge to it that tells her it isn’t an empty threat. She’s been strong enough to survive before, but God, she’d wished she’d never have to survive something like this again. 

She’s almost glad they haven’t fed her. She’d just throw up whatever she’d eaten.

The door opens, and she tenses. If she can just get one moment, take advantage of one moment of weakness.

The blindfold is pulled down, and she blinks as Bucky’s face comes into focus. She doesn’t fight, doesn’t move, as he cuts through the ropes. If her brain is tricking her, trying to comfort her, this is the cruelest way to do it.

“Can you stand?” His voice is quiet, gentle.

She doesn’t try. “We had a deal,” she says dully. Her voice is little more than a croak.

“I made a choice,” he corrects, and he bends to help her up. She sways and feels even more nauseous than before. He pulls one of her arms around his shoulder, then gives up and bends to pick her up. “So did you.”

The movement makes her stomach roll, and she doesn’t know if she throws up before she loses consciousness.

She wakes in the hospital, propped up in a bed that feels like it’s covered in plastic. It’s dark. She feels like she’s drifting, and her eyes need time to adjust. Sam is asleep on a couch in the corner. Bucky is slouched down is a seat beside her bed. He straightens when he sees her looking at him. “You came?” Her voice is hoarse and comes out in little more than a whisper. “For me?” She still feels like she’s dreaming.

He holds a cup to her lips and helps her drink until she grabs the cup herself. It takes two hands to stop the shaking. She’s got an IV, but she ignores that. She’s thirsty as hell. “Always,” he promises. “I told you. You’re worth saving.”

She isn’t sure what it is. She blames the drugs they’ve given her. It certainly isn’t any sort of emotional weakness that makes her start crying. She’s still dizzy, floating, and her throat is still hoarse enough that it feels like like her crying fit is mostly giant, heaving gasps.

Bucky looks like he’s panicking, and Sam wakes up and is saying something Sharon can’t quiet understand, and then Bucky sits on the side of her bed and pulls her into an awkward hug.

As she calms down, she hides her face in his shirt, embarrassed, feeling empty but also… relieved?

“Dumbass,” Sam says. “Him,” he adds quickly. “Not you, Shar.” He settles back on the couch. “Dumbass,” he says again.

She loses track of how long she sits there, hiding her face in Bucky’s shirt, but it can’t be long before the nurse comes in and takes notes and asks her questions. She has a concussion and the standard dehydration, so they’ll be keeping her in the hospital. She tries to be pleasant enough, and when the nurse is gone drops back into the pillows. “You know he’s only pretending to sleep,” she whispers.

“He’s really bad at it,” Bucky admits.

“You don’t have to stay,” she tells him.

He looks at her, always seeming as if he’s about to say something more, and then he looks away. She falls asleep before she can press him.

* * *

Sam leaves a couple days later for family stuff. He doesn’t tell Sharon, but Bucky knows that Sam had left the family stuff when he’d heard about Sharon, and now that Sharon is on the mend, he wants to get back to it. Sam extends an invitation to both of them, but Sharon’s doctors aren’t ready to release her yet, and Bucky won’t leave her in the hospital.

They end up releasing her the next day, and he tags along as she books a B&B.

“Not a hotel?” he asks.

“I still don’t like them,” she admits. “And after… well. I think I’m going to err on the side of caution here.” She looks down the street, and the two of them lapse into a companionable and surprisingly awkward silence.

It occurs him that he used to be better at talking to women. “I’ll just stick around a little longer,” he says, “just to make sure you get settled in okay. What with the concussion and all.” And it sounds weak even to him.

“We never did get breakfast,” she reminds him.

They eat – him, far more than her – and walk along the street after. They don’t talk, and the silence is fine. They can be silent with one another. They’re good like that. But he thinks he ought to say something, and it something he wants to say but is afraid to say, is afraid it will come out wrong.

They take a circuitous route to her B&B with neither of them mentioning it’s the longest way to get there. He kicks himself when he realizes – she just got out of the hospital – but she doesn’t lean on him or seem dizzy at all. He offers his arm up anyway, and she looks at it, then up at him with some expression he can’t understand, and he pulls his arm back.

She breaks the silence when they get to her place. “Coffee?”

Sure, he thinks. This confused feeling, but with more caffeine. That sounds smart.

“Sure,” he says.

She makes a gesture they worked out ages ago, and he searches for cameras and bugs while she makes coffee. When he’s done, she hands him a cup, and they quietly sit at the cozy dining table and avoid looking at each.

She’s avoiding looking at him.

He narrows his eyes at her. She’s quiet, too. She’s on the verge of saying something, too. She’s avoiding looking at him, too.

At length, she looks at him, and her eyes narrow.

“I was thinking I might stay a while.” He takes a sip of coffee, keeps his eyes on her.

She nods. “Okay.” She pauses. “There’s only one bed.”

“I can sleep on the couch.”

She looks at him again and starts clearing dishes. “You don’t have to.” She doesn’t look at him as she carries her cup – and his, which she’d plucked out of his hands and is still half full, not that she seemed to notice – to the sink. “If you don’t want to, I mean.”

* * *

Bucky is fond of choices. Sharon’s always respected that before, understood it. But now that he chooses her, she admits that she appreciates it on a new level.

She’d never realized before how she hadn’t been anyone’s choice. Maybe Steve had worked as hard at things as she had, but he had ultimately chosen someone else. She’s still bitter about it, still bitter that she’d held such naive beliefs about the person she’d admired and tried to loved. Or maybe she had loved him – she thought she had – and he just hadn’t loved her back. But the bitterness is fading.

Bucky’s choices make her more cognizant of her own. Friends are choices. Relationships are choices. Missions are choices. Helping people or leaving them is a choice.

Choices have a way of coming back full circle. Not all all the time, not in this unjust world.

But choosing to never let someone feel abandoned like she had led to Bucky choosing to never let her feel abandoned. It led to them choosing to fall asleep in each others arms and choosing to eat an ungodly amount of waffles in the morning.

Love, she realizes one day, is a choice. And life is full of choices.


End file.
